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0 pointsselfhoster114y ago0 comments

> Sooner or later, we won't even remember how it was before. Who even remembers the internet before advertising morphed it into something completely different? How long was that period? 5 years?

That's what worries me. After a long stint of playing entirely only smartphone games, going back to play some older titles on PC was... really weird. None of the usual pay to play friction or engagement traps that are so ubiquitous.

I did not feel happy that the lack of these things that I actually hated was making me uneasy.

Is the memory hole effect really that strong?

0 comments

donmcronald4y ago

Most kids don't even know what it's like to play a game that's not riddled with ads and designed around microtransactions.

There are a lot of things that require a generation (of people) to change. For example, the latency of game streaming services is awful if you're used to a local experience, but if you ask a 12 year old that's never experienced low latency, local gaming, they don't even realize it could be different. They'll happily play high latency streamed games.

So when you see things like the investment that's going into things like game streaming and it seems stupid, you have to consider there may not be any expectation of capturing the current market. They're after the market that's in elementary school right now.

derekp74y ago

I don't know -- when I was a kid, in the arcade, the machines constantly prompted me to insert another quarter to continue playing.

falcolas4y ago

The nice thing about those games is the cost could be offset by skill. FTP games now offset the cost using time, when you can offset it at all.

datavirtue4y ago

Yeah, but we solved that problem, and now it's back.

sofixa4y ago

> For example, the latency of game streaming services is awful if you're used to a local experience, but if you ask a 12 year old that's never experienced low latency, local gaming, they don't even realize it could be different. They'll happily play high latency streamed games.

That's subjective and dependent on the service and the game. I have Stadia, GeForce Now, and local games ( with some overlap). Latency is minimal and barely visible ( invisible for grand strategy games).

charcircuit4y ago

>the latency of game streaming services is awful

Latency is not a problem with game streaming. I'd say quality is more of a problem. With streaming you are only going to get the image a few frames late which is not bad at all.

selfhoster11OP4y ago

Based on your comment, the already-bad state of latency across the software stack will get even worse. I really don't want that.

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